nuclear power

01/20/2009

There's an interesting discussion at the Oil Drum today on LFTR nuclear reactor technology. I have looked into this a little as a result of James Hansen's letter to Obama calling for a research program to develop these fourth generation nuclear technologies. Hansen thinks that the global warming predicament is so serious that nuclear power will be needed to knock out coal generation which is far more dangerous to the planet.

The comment below comes closest to my own views, though I would be more supportive of a massive research effort to determine if these fourth generation nuclear technologies really are feasible.

Ender on January 20, 2009

What is wrong with you people? This is like me as an computer system admin banking on Windows 8 to solve all my IT problems. Windows 8 like LFTR is vaporware. There are no operating LFTR reactors of any kind working in the world today yet you are all willing to hitch your wagons a totally unproven solution that could be the Edsel Ford of nuclear reactors.

The solutions are already here and operating.

1. Generate NEGAWATTS. Electricity you don't have to generate is the quickest, cheapest and easiest method of reducing greenhouse emissions. Start a massive campaign of energy conservation and reduction. I realise that this is boring alternative to something as sexy as LFTR however Negawatts will be saving more power sooner than any new technology. You only have to look at the passive solar threads on TOD to see what can be done and what savings can be made.

2. Make the grid smart. Put in new HVDC links with storage. Again distribution links are the hidden boring part of electricity however without them the grid ceases to function. Replace old transformers etc with modern massively more efficient units. Replace dumb loads with smart loads. The storage at the end of HVDC links benefits the current grid as it can greatly reduce the need for spinning reserve which in itself is a massive waste.

3. Put all the renewables into the mix. Join present wind farms (that should be legislated to have storage), with solar thermal, rooftop PV, tidal, wave and geothermal so that the whole is greater that the capacity factor of the parts and then provide 24X7 power.

4. Join in the existing peaking plants to the smart grid with smart controls and add biomass plants that also product biochar to enhance the fertility of the soil.

5. Electrify transport with V2G so it becomes part of the solution.

Look don't get me wrong LFTR might be great and the answer to our problems but lets not put all our eggs on a vaporware technology that may not deliver any of its promises. We need to start now with what we have. Renewables involve some compromises however they can support a technological society that is prepared to meet them halfway.

06/05/2005

Twenty years after Chernobyl, the pro-nuclear lobby has decided that it's time to glue a happy face on nuclear power again. Simultaneous pro-nuclear public relations campaigns have plastered their briefs in the US and British media markets in the last couple of months. Time will tell whether they stick.

Jonathan Leake and Dan Box reported in New Statesman (The Nuclear Charm Offensive, 5/23/05) that a sudden flux of news articles about nuclear power right around the UK election last month was preceded by months of planning and the retainer of expensive PR consultants.

"Nothing had occurred politically," they said. "There had been no reports, scandals, technical breakthroughs or new policies. What had happened was that a group of journalists had taken the bait offered them by a few canny public relations experts."

But good PR can't take all the credit because the growing prominence of global warming is a golden opportunity. If the world is to avoid catastrophic global warming, we must start reducing CO2 emissions immediately. Nuclear lobbies tout their product as "carbon free" even though the mining and processing of uranium ore involves considerable amounts of greenhouse gasses. Still, a nuclear plant over its life may emit less than a third of the CO2 of a gas-fired power plant.

One of the strategies for making nuclear power look good is to compare it with its top "carbon-free" competitor - wind power. Nuclear is reliable where wind power is intermittent; nuclear is strong and solid where wind power is weak and dispersed.

The comparison cuts both ways. Nuclear is not always reliable - plants are often shut down for repairs, sometimes for months at a time - and that is just the beginning of a long list of negatives that includes: no place to safely store radioactive waste; security concerns about terrorist attacks and nuclear proliferation; the depletion of high-grade uranium ore; and the potential for accidents like Chernobyl.

Still, for a true-blue pro-nuker, that list of negatives is hardly daunting. Peter Schwartz and Spencer Reiss, in their article Nuclear Now! (Wired, February 2005) blow off the long-term waste storage concern, calling it an exercise in science fiction: "We don't need a million-year solution. A hundred years will do just fine - long enough to let the stuff cool down and allow us to decide what to do with it."

But for nuclear power alone to effectively stabilize carbon emissions at current levels would require seven times the world's present inventory of 440 reactors - that's 3,080 new thousand megawatt reactors (see Elizabeth Kolbert, The Climate of Man, Part III, The New Yorker, May 9, 2005 for background on how I derived this figure). The US is already generating 2000 tons of high-level radioactive waste a year. This waste does not "cool down" significantly in the space of a hundred years and there is no indication that we will have any better idea of how to store it a hundred years from now. Most of it now sits in uncontained pools of water at reactor sites around the country. What will we do with seven times as much or more?

On the depletion of high-grade uranium ore, Schwartz and Reiss recommend stretching the supply by reprocessing spent fuel, which also happens to be the way to make the bomb-grade fissionable material that is the core of the nuclear proliferation threat. For these writers, the solution is simplicity itself: "... create a global nuclear fuel company... [t]his company would collect, reprocess, and distribute fuel to every nation in the world, thus keeping potential bomb fixings out of circulation." Even without deliberate targeting by terrorists, a large distribution network of bomb-grade materials practically guarantees that there will be a normal transportation accident some day with horrible consequences.

After blithely disposing of these nuclear pitfalls as mere engineering problems, the Wired authors address the negatives of wind and solar, calling them "‘false gods' - attractive but powerless." Their biggest concern is that these technologies require a lot of land area to deploy: "... a run-of-the-mill 1,000 megawatt photovoltaic plant will require about 60 square miles of panes alone. In other words, the largest industrial structure ever built."

To Schwartz and Reiss then, nuclear waste disposal is a negligible problem while installing solar panels on millions of roofs, along roadways and over parking lots is an insurmountable challenge. They call solar and wind "pie in the emissions-free sky," while nuclear power is "proven technology."

Peter Schwartz is a member of the Global Business Network consulting group, along with Stewart Brand, one-time sustainability guru and editor of the 1970s Whole Earth Catalog. Schwartz is also a co-author of the Pentagon report released last year that warned of the possibility of abrupt climate change. These futurists are an important current within the "geo-green" movement that is bringing environmentalists together with neo-cons to promote US energy independence along with reduced carbon emissions. However, it is now becoming clear that the thrust of this movement is a nuclear revival and not the development of truly green, renewable power.

For instance, the new version of the McCain-Lieberman climate change bill adds in a hefty nuclear power subsidy. This is a harbinger of what we are likely to see in this summer's episode of the Energy Bill Wars: nuclear advocates will bargain for new subsidies in exchange for some slightly increased support of solar, wind and energy efficiency.

One of the prizes the nuclear industry wants is a production tax credit of 1.8 cents per kilowatt hour guaranteed for ten years. This is on top of a package already passed in the House version of the Energy Bill that includes more than $6 billion in subsidies and tax breaks plus the reauthorization of the Price-Anderson Act that caps industry's liability for nuclear accidents.

According to Public Citizen, nuclear energy has received $74 billion of taxpayers' money for research and development since 1948. In contrast, fossil fuels have received $30.9 billion; renewables have gotten $14.6 billion and energy efficiency $11.7 billion.

For the nuclear industry to demand a guaranteed production tax credit is particularly insane in the face of the struggles of the wind power industry. Here is a power source that, once installed, has NO fuel cost. While the rest of the world is experiencing explosive growth in wind power, the US has crippled its industry by refusing to provide a reliable production tax credit. The only credit available has to be renewed every two years. Attached to last year's failed Energy Bill, it was saved at the last minute by insertion into another piece of legislation, but the uncertainty created deters serious investment in wind power.

Which industry most deserves our hard earned tax money? Massive deployment of wind power could help revitalize US manufacturing and bring money into rural areas by installing wind turbines in farmers' fields. Nuclear power employs only elite contractors and engineers along with a few Homer Simpsons to run the plants.

The newest, most sophisticated geo-green project is coming from General Electric, which has just launched a $90 million ad campaign for its "Ecomagination" program. The company is committing to reducing its greenhouse gas emissions company-wide, improving energy efficiency and doubling its R&D investment in "clean" energy.

These goals were developed with help from the World Resources Institute, a sustainable development think tank. WRI's president, Jonathan Lash, teamed up with GE's Jeffrey Immelt to write an Op-Ed for The Washington Post (5/21/05) titled: "The Courage to Develop Clean Energy." The duo called for a dose of good old "American will" to push through a sensible energy policy that would accelerate development of "wind, solar, clean coal, nuclear power and other resources."

GE owns investments in all of these technologies, so the company stands to benefit no matter which energy alternatives get the most subsidies. But are they just hedging their bets, or are they secretly hoping that nuclear will win big?

The UK Guardian's Polly Toynbee, in her article, Capitulation to the Nuclear Lobby Is a Politics of Despair, wrote:

"But don't underestimate the immense power of the pro-nuclearists. They will begin with the reasonable claim that nuclear is just "part of the mix", but the monumental cost of a new nuclear program would devour all the cash - and far more - needed to develop better alternatives."Big companies generally prefer big, capital intensive projects over smaller, retail level projects. It is not a matter of profits so much as it is a matter of control. Oil, gas and coal have fueled imperial ambitions to heights never seen prior to the 20th century. We may not recognize it as imperialism because there is no single emperor, but we know well who is in charge. President Eisenhower called it the military-industrial complex and that is still as good a term for it as any.

Big power fantasies are not limited to heads of governments and corporations. Peter Schwartz wants nuclear power because "...wouldn't it be a blast to barrel down the freeway in a hydrogen Hummer...?"

But the real choice is not between a high-powered but dangerous nuclear future and a solar-powered, modest granola lifestyle. We will never build enough nukes to replace the immense legacy of stored sunlight that is fossil fuels. We are inevitably headed toward a different, decentralized, low energy future. If there is a human impulse toward imperialism, there is an equally strong human impulse for democracy, and I am optimistic that the future will offer fewer opportunities for despots and more for democrats.

The real choice then is this: Do we saddle our descendents with the poison forever of nuclear contamination in our attempts to hang on to a doomed lifestyle? Or do we start learning to live lightly on the planet now, and spare the children?

06/03/2004

www.truthout.org Last week one of the world's top scientists made a disturbing announcement. James Lovelock, author of the Gaia hypothesis, called on the world to fight global warming by initiating a rapid switch from coal and gas to nuclear power, which has no carbon emissions. The problems of nuclear power, he says, pale in comparison to the threat of global warming.

According to the Gaia theory, the earth is more than just a rock in space. The biosphere itself regulates conditions on the planet to keep them favorable for life. An example is the carbon cycle. Plants take up carbon dioxide released into the air by volcanoes and deposit it in the soil where it forms calcium carbonate. Rainwater washes calcium carbonate into the ocean where marine life forms it into shells. Shells sink down to the ocean floor forming sediments of limestone and chalk. This Gaian system has been disrupted by humans burning forests and fossil fuels; carbon is accumulating in the atmosphere and the temperature is going up.

Whether or not you agree with Lovelock's solution to global warming, you must feel the gravity of our situation in the stark choice he presents. Global warming could destroy civilization. The crops that feed the world are adapted to today's climate. Yields would plummet in a significantly warmer world, and every recent indicator shows that the world is already warming much faster than predicted. Furthermore, a rise in sea level of just seven meters would flood every major coastal city.

But still, how can Lovelock say that widespread nuclear technology is the solution to global warming? Part of the answer is that he takes the deep time view of the planet. Life has a certain amount of tolerance for radiation, but continued warming could cause an irreversible shift to a permanently hotter world. That hotter world might or might not support human civilization. As our sun ages, it grows hotter, and tinkering with the planetary cooling mechanism, as we are now doing, is exceedingly dangerous.

Another part of Lovelock's reason could be a species of professional jealousy. In his book Healing Gaia he relates his frustration at the worldwide alarm over ozone depletion and CFC's as compared to the deafening silence, denial and inaction on global warming. In his view, big science has focused its budgets and research might on specific problems like ozone depletion, nuclear radiation and toxic pollution while giving short shrift to the human impacts that are unbalancing the climate - deforestation and carbon emissions.

Lovelock is surely right about this misplacement of priorities, and the reason may be mostly that, as difficult as the first bunch of problems are, they seem to have techno-fix solutions, whereas global warming does not. Now Lovelock is proposing a techno-fix solution to global warming - nuclear power.

But why must our civilization be based on techno-fix solutions? Isn't it time to build a civilization that is sustainable? Sustainable means first of all, the end of growth and the stabilization of population. It also means the end of greed and over-consumption. Lifestyle changes to encourage conservation could save the energy output of many nuclear power plants.

Population growth is not inevitable. Spending as little as $20 billion dollars annually would bring full reproductive health care to every woman in the world. According to Population Action International, every year nearly 80 million unintended pregnancies occur worldwide and 350 million women lack access to effective family planning methods. World population is now increasing by about 85 million people a year. With full funding of women's health care and a little more to provide education and employment opportunities, we could halt population growth in a decade.

Instead of a big industrial build up to produce nuclear power plants, why not put that same bill of materials and energy into massive construction of solar panels and wind turbines? A combination of demand reduction and low tech renewables could be the underpinning of a new society that is just, sustainable and de-centralized. But Lovelock claims that renewable technologies are too "visionary" and cannot power our civilization.

He seems to have little faith in people's ability to change. He has asked the question: "Could we, by some act of common will, change our natures and become proper stewards, gentle gardeners taking care of all of the natural life of our planet?" And answered it: "I would sooner expect a goat to succeed as a gardener than expect humans to become responsible stewards of the Earth."

Nuclear power, on the other hand, fits perfectly with civilization as we know it: a centralized, male dominant society that operates a Ponzi-scheme economy based on exploitation and endless growth. Nuclear technology is completely owned and controlled by the giant corporations that sit at the top of the pyramid.

Nuclear power also has one other very big problem: nuclear proliferation in an age of terror.

When will we stop snubbing the low-tech solutions that can make real changes? When will we embrace conservation and simplicity? Perhaps when we are faced with the choice of a nuke in our backyard that will produce abundant, reliable power vs. a possibly less plentiful solar or wind installation, we will decide that it's worth it to turn off some lights to avoid the risk of a Chernobyl.

Lovelock brushes off such risks, saying: "Nearly one third of us will die of cancer anyway." That's not something I am willing to do.

Please, read Dr. Lovelock's statement below. You may come to your own conclusions about the actions we need to take. Or like me, you may want more information. The world, and most especially the United States, is just coming out of an intense period of denial of the facts of global warming. Though we do not need more studies to prove that global warming exists, we do need studies to look at the best solutions. Perhaps some mix of nuclear power is called for, but as we search for solutions, we should not accept anything less than a total rethinking of civilization as we know it.

Nuclear Power is the Only Green Solution James Lovelock Independent.UK

Monday 24 May 2004

We have no time to experiment with visionary energy sources; civilisation is in imminent danger.

Sir David King, the Government's chief scientist, was far-sighted to say that global warming is a more serious threat than terrorism. He may even have underestimated, because, since he spoke, new evidence of climate change suggests it could be even more serious, and the greatest danger that civilisation has faced so far.

Most of us are aware of some degree of warming; winters are warmer and spring comes earlier. But in the Arctic, warming is more than twice as great as here in Europe and in summertime, torrents of melt water now plunge from Greenland's kilometre-high glaciers. The complete dissolution of Greenland's icy mountains will take time, but by then the sea will have risen seven metres, enough to make uninhabitable all of the low lying coastal cities of the world, including London, Venice, Calcutta, New York and Tokyo. Even a two metre rise is enough to put most of southern Florida under water.

The floating ice of the Arctic Ocean is even more vulnerable to warming; in 30 years, its white reflecting ice, the area of the US, may become dark sea that absorbs the warmth of summer sunlight, and further hastens the end of the Greenland ice. The North Pole, goal of so many explorers, will then be no more than a point on the ocean surface.

Not only the Arctic is changing; climatologists warn a four-degree rise in temperature is enough to eliminate the vast Amazon forests in a catastrophe for their people, their biodiversity, and for the world, which would lose one of its great natural air conditioners.

The scientists who form the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported in 2001 that global temperature would rise between two and six degrees Celsius by 2100. Their grim forecast was made perceptible by last summer's excessive heat; and according to Swiss meteorologists, the Europe-wide hot spell that killed over 20,000 was wholly different from any previous heat wave. The odds against it being a mere deviation from the norm were 300,000 to one. It was a warning of worse to come.

What makes global warming so serious and so urgent is that the great Earth system, Gaia, is trapped in a vicious circle of positive feedback. Extra heat from any source, whether from greenhouse gases, the disappearance of Arctic ice or the Amazon forest, is amplified, and its effects are more than additive. It is almost as if we had lit a fire to keep warm, and failed to notice, as we piled on fuel, that the fire was out of control and the furniture had ignited. When that happens, little time is left to put out the fire before it consumes the house. Global warming, like a fire, is accelerating and almost no time is left to act.

So what should we do? We can just continue to enjoy a warmer 21st century while it lasts, and make cosmetic attempts, such as the Kyoto Treaty, to hide the political embarrassment of global warming, and this is what I fear will happen in much of the world. When, in the 18th century, only one billion people lived on Earth, their impact was small enough for it not to matter what energy source they used.

But with six billion, and growing, few options remain; we can not continue drawing energy from fossil fuels and there is no chance that the renewables, wind, tide and water power can provide enough energy and in time. If we had 50 years or more we might make these our main sources. But we do not have 50 years; the Earth is already so disabled by the insidious poison of greenhouse gases that even if we stop all fossil fuel burning immediately, the consequences of what we have already done will last for 1,000 years. Every year that we continue burning carbon makes it worse for our descendants and for civilisation.

Worse still, if we burn crops grown for fuel this could hasten our decline. Agriculture already uses too much of the land needed by the Earth to regulate its climate and chemistry. A car consumes 10 to 30 times as much carbon as its driver; imagine the extra farmland required to feed the appetite of cars.

By all means, let us use the small input from renewables sensibly, but only one immediately available source does not cause global warming and that is nuclear energy. True, burning natural gas instead of coal or oil releases only half as much carbon dioxide, but unburnt gas is 25 times as potent a greenhouse agent as is carbon dioxide. Even a small leakage would neutralise the advantage of gas.

The prospects are grim, and even if we act successfully in amelioration, there will still be hard times, as in war, that will stretch our grandchildren to the limit. We are tough and it would take more than the climate catastrophe to eliminate all breeding pairs of humans; what is at risk is civilisation. As individual animals we are not so special, and in some ways are like a planetary disease, but through civilisation we redeem ourselves and become a precious asset for the Earth; not least because through our eyes the Earth has seen herself in all her glory.

There is a chance we may be saved by an unexpected event such as a series of volcanic eruptions severe enough to block out sunlight and so cool the Earth. But only losers would bet their lives on such poor odds. Whatever doubts there are about future climates, there are no doubts that greenhouse gases and temperatures both are rising.

We have stayed in ignorance for many reasons; important among them is the denial of climate change in the US where governments have failed to give their climate scientists the support they needed. The Green lobbies, which should have given priority to global warming, seem more concerned about threats to people than with threats to the Earth, not noticing that we are part of the Earth and wholly dependent upon its well being. It may take a disaster worse than last summer's European deaths to wake us up.

Opposition to nuclear energy is based on irrational fear fed by Hollywood-style fiction, the Green lobbies and the media. These fears are unjustified, and nuclear energy from its start in 1952 has proved to be the safest of all energy sources. We must stop fretting over the minute statistical risks of cancer from chemicals or radiation. Nearly one third of us will die of cancer anyway, mainly because we breathe air laden with that all pervasive carcinogen, oxygen. If we fail to concentrate our minds on the real danger, which is global warming, we may die even sooner, as did more than 20,000 unfortunates from overheating in Europe last summer.

I find it sad and ironic that the UK, which leads the world in the quality of its Earth and climate scientists, rejects their warnings and advice, and prefers to listen to the Greens. But I am a Green and I entreat my friends in the movement to drop their wrongheaded objection to nuclear energy.

Even if they were right about its dangers, and they are not, its worldwide use as our main source of energy would pose an insignificant threat compared with the dangers of intolerable and lethal heat waves and sea levels rising to drown every coastal city of the world. We have no time to experiment with visionary energy sources; civilisation is in imminent danger and has to use nuclear - the one safe, available, energy source - now or suffer the pain soon to be inflicted by our outraged planet.

The writer is an independent scientist and the creator of the Gaia hypothesis of the Earth as a self-regulating organism.